What’s that I smell coming from the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal? I don’t know, but it resembles something horses leave behind in the barnyard.

While the Journal may have a well-earned reputation as the “go-to” publication for business leaders, its editorial page editors lack a certain penchant for reality when it comes to a discussion of immigration – legal and otherwise.

Recently on the Journal’s op-ed pages, Jason L. Riley took a stereotypical WSJ position of supporting a “come one, come all” immigration policy, while failing to explain why such an open-borders policy is more desirable than, say, border security. Instead, he relied on the liberal tactic of “smear first, last and always” to silence critics who dare to speak about border security.

Even the title of his piece – “GOP Nativists Tarnish Reagan’s ‘Shining City'” – is a cruel joke, and not one just for conservatives, but for anyone who is serious about derailing the destructive effects mass immigration is having on our nation.

For the record, the “shining city” mantra was a phrase oft-repeated by President Reagan, though it was actually coined several hundred years earlier by John Winthrop, an early pilgrim who wrote it to describe the kind of American nation he envisioned.

In a number of respects, America indeed has become a “shining city on a hill,” thanks to the ingenuity, hard work and sacrifices made by Americans all along the way.

In fact, America has become a shining city on top of the globe; in terms of gross domestic product, military might, technological advancement, medicine and resourcefulness, what country historically can compare?

Our success as a nation is what drives so much migration – and why so many people from neighboring poor nations want to be here, no matter what they have to sacrifice to get here.

That’s admirable and it says a lot about the success we as Americans have earned and accomplished. Yet for those who dare to protect these accomplishments, pundits like Riley are waiting in the wings, ready to throw open the floodgates while calling opponents “nativist” ethnophobes, bigots and “white supremacists.”

It never ceases to amaze me that supposedly educated people who have the ability to write stirringly and sensibly resort to labeling and attacking opponents personally, instead of attempting to debate them intelligently. Riley epitomizes the elite media’s reactionary stance toward any hint that American leaders have a right – nay, a duty – to secure this nation’s borders, by any means necessary, and especially during a time of unprecedented global terrorism.

Riley is writing like scores of other pundits who have never set foot within 50 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. He even has the temerity to suggest the U.S. is incapable of protecting its borders. And he calls “unenforceable” any laws designed to strengthen border security and discourage illegal immigration.

To suggest the U.S., the world’s only remaining superpower – with our global satellite communications and surveillance systems, ultra-modern military forces, $10 trillion GDP, vast technological superiority and armed populace – cannot substantially impact the current level of illegal immigration shows an incredible level of ignorance. The U.S. government has never been serious about closing off its borders to illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and the occasional Mexican military or police unit that “accidentally” strays onto American soil. So how can anyone say it isn’t possible?

In fact, the government has been quite the facilitator of mass immigration. Between Democratic voter interests and Wall Street Journal neocon corporate interests, Washington has been bought and sold many times over on the open-borders concept.

The concept of open borders is also fraught with hypocrisies and double standards. On the one hand, advocates argue the concept can work as long as migrants are documented, tracked and possess the proper paperwork and identification. But on the other, they say current law forbidding employers from hiring undocumented workers is impossible to enforce because it, in Riley’s words, has only “created a thriving black market for false identification papers.”

Which is it – documentation helps or doesn’t help?

Here is why it matters that Americans get serious about controlling our borders. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics, by 2050 non-Hispanic whites will comprise only 50 percent of a population expected to swell to 420 million people.

So what, right? It isn’t important for a nation to be comprised of a people – regardless of their ethnicity – who share common bonds, languages and customs, right?

Tell that to the Russian soldiers dying in Chechnya.

Tell that to the Serbs and ethnic Albanians fighting in Kosovo.

Tell that to Indonesia’s warring ethnic factions.

Tell that to the Muslim terrorists who hate America and Americans because we are largely a Christian nation.

And tell it to the militant Hispanic groups already inside our own country who thirst for a greater Latino homeland rejoined with the Mexican nation of the 18th century.

The Journal’s neocon position on immigration stinks to high heaven. Open borders for any reason is not an ingredient conducive to future stability. While admittedly there are no easy solutions to the problem, there are plenty of good solutions.